Gluten-free Cooking and Swallowtail Aerial Dance

The Gluten-Free Chicano Cooks

Gluten-free Enchilada Pie / Foto Gallery 

Michael Sedano 

I’m happy realizing I now struggle to remember some of the hectic discontinuities of fulltime caregiving, like grocery shopping. Going to the store is a major production with challenges that often add to the hundreds of reasons you don’t go out, again. Living with Dementia's like this; when everything’s merely hectic that means you’re having a good day. 

At first, I resisted delivery. The seductive power of making a list on the computer got me. A few hours pass and someone sends you a foto of groceries at the front door. But when antoja doesn’t match what’s in the hielera, even with grub hub and delivery, let creative hunger guide your cuchillo. 

That’s where I stood, mas o menos back in ’21, when hunger and a bare cupboard inspired some creative hunger problem-solving and that became a La Bloga-Tuesday column.

A version of this recipe was published Tuesday, November 02, 2021

  https://labloga.blogspot.com/2021/11/enchilada-problem-solving-chilaquiles.html 

there’s no tortillas, I don’t eat bread 

there’s no tortillas, for my refrieds… 

That’s not exactly how Lalo Guerrero sings it, but that’s what my refrigerator sings when I begin the process of making dinner. In my life, cooking a meal is one thing that’s certain, and it’s all mine, to plan, shop, prepare, and share. There's special importance to this duty along with its inherent joy. Mealtime ought to be automatic enjoyment as the day’s one respite-- 

These days there’s always an obstacle. It’s not that there’s no tortillas, there aren’t enough. And I knew it yesterday when I moved the small can of Las Palmas enchilada sauce, picante, out to the kitchen. But I couldn’t get to the grocery store. 

Old mother Hubbard and I went to my reefer to see what’s to see: everything today is down-to-the-dregs leftover: a few slices of pork chop from stir-fry, chunks of white and yellow cheddars, a nub of fresh mozzarella, a manchego wedge. There’s cilantro and half a brown onion. 

Four torts, what to do: Quesadillas, Tacos, Tostadas, something else. More than anything, I have the antoja for enchiladas. But not to make just four. When I make enchiladas I want to make a dozen at least. Compromise: chilaquiles. 

I grew up eating rolled enchiladas de queso. When I was in the Army and overseas, my Mom taught Barbara how to make enchiladas. My gramma and my mom made onion-cheese red chile rolled enchiladas. Rolled. No other. 

One relative serves her husband a tortilla folded over the filling and baked. Barbara and I call that “no-love enchiladas” and my Mom agreed and never got over that slight. But I understand “quick & dirty”; that’s evidently how Manitos Manitas do theirs: red or green, folded.  

The past 40 years or so, I’ve routinely rolled meat and cheese inside my enchiladas. I served this variation—her sauce--to my mom when she lived with us, and she liked them, no secret disapproval of how her son gets fed. When you eat my enchiladas, you’re eating my gramma’s cooking, those are my mom’s enchiladas. 

That’s not what ran through my thoughts holding that bag of four tortillas. I am tired and worn out. Wednesday can’t come soon enough—that’s my day off. So tonight it’s gluten-free cooking, estilo quick and desperate. 

The Gluten-free Chicano’s Quick & Desperate Enchilada Pie 

Ingredients • about 85g carbohydrates total. 

4 tortillas 

4 oz meat 

½ brown onion 

1 cup grated cheese of mix varieties 

Cilantro 

Corn starch, absolutely pure corn 

Las Palmas picante enchilada sauce. (Hot or mild red enchilada sauce (no tomato).Green enchilada sauce works equally well.

Comino 

Refried frijoles 

Sour cream or Crema 

Pie pan 

No-stick spray (see the carb counter at the bottom of the page) 

Work At Your Own Pace

 

Spray the pie pan and set it near the work area. 

Pre-heat oven 375º. Middle or top rack. 

Wrap tortillas in a dishtowel, microwave 30 seconds. Let rest and they'll grow supple enough to use to roll enchiladas, as was my intent today. But the first tortilla I take from the towel cracks, from age, or manufacturing defect. Ni modo. I'm not rolling this tortilla. This decides my menu. Instead of rolled enchiladas. Chilaquiles for dinner. 

I tear all the tortillas into strips and divide those into pieces. Delight is in the details, in a  kitchen. I lose myself at the chopping board and I treat all ingredients with proper respect.

Mince onion, chop cilantro into the cebolla.  If I'd gotten to the store, I would have chopped in some black sliced olives. 

Grate cheeses. A food processor like Cuisineart makes grating no challenge. As a child in the 1950s, and until 1963, I was my mother's cheese grater. I went away to college and Mom replaced me with a Cuisineart.

In the Microwave oven, I reheat refrigerated beans, stir in a few splashes of water, remicro the frijoles to spreadable consistency.

I'm using leftover porkchops. You could fry up some taco ground beef or pick meat off a chicken carcass. I chop the pork and set it aside. 

Pour half the can of chile sauce into a microwaveable vessel. Stir 2 TBS corn starch into the cold chile sauce and dissolve all the lumps you see. Cover with a dish or film and micro 2 minutes. Stir and micro 1 minute. You want the chile-cornstarch more than twice as thick as straight from the can. 

Spoon a couple TBS of sauce into the bottom of the pie pan.

Put the torn corn tortillas in the pan on top of the sauce. 

Add onion-cilantro, stir together.

You have a lot of sauce still. Reserve 2 TBS sauce when you pour the warm sauce into the tortillas. 

Mix it all up. Use a fork and separate the tortilla pieces that stick together. Every dry tortilla surface needs to get wet.

Spread the wet tortilla pieces across the bottom of the pan as a base of the meat and bean layers.

Spread the ground meat across the top, forming a thin layer. 

Spoon beans around the edge of the pie pan and flatten them in a circle toward the center of the pan. Be decorative and make a ring around the pie pan. 

Slather sour cream atop the ring of refritos. 

Cover the open surface with cheeses. 

Dribble reserved red sauce across the cheese. Also spatula the red sauce out of the cooking vessel. Use all your red or green enchilada sauce.  

Place the pie pan on a flat cookie pan and Bake at 375º for 40 minutes. 

Cool for at least half an hour. 

The tortilla become completely saturated with the thickened chile sauce as it boils in the oven. As the pie cools from boiling, the tortilla custard settles and thickens. When you cut your gluten-free quick&desperate tortilla pie, the insides flow only a little if it's cooled enough. 

Serve generous scoops that you cover with an egg or two. I served a side salad of chopped lettuce with a scoop of cottage cheese and canned pear slices. 

The next day is a wonder! The refrigerated leftovers have solidified into a beautiful dish. Reheat for a minute or so in the micro, or turn on the oven to 350º and give it 10 minutes, covered. 

And if you got delivery before breakfast/lunch the next day, some sliced tomatoes and aguacate, a hot salsa on the side.

Carb Counting via http://www.carbohydrate-counter.org/advsearch.php 

8g 4 tortillas 

0g 4 oz meat 

8g ½ brown onion 

2g 1 cup grated cheese of mix varieties 

18g Las Palmas picante enchilada sauce 

1.5g Cilantro 

14g Corn starch, absolutely pure corn 

.01g Comino 

28g Refried frijoles 

6g Sour cream or Crema 

about 85g carbohydrates in the entire meal.

⸺

Swallowtail Double Helix: The Center Holds

Turning and twisting about one another in the garden air, two Swallowtail Butterflies form a widening gyre as they rise high above tree tops. The pair of Swallowtails descends toward my lens, then rise again. Flying into an ever-tightening spiral, the butterflies touch wing-to-wing. The Swallowtails fly as one, rising dipping soaring turning and turning, not breaking apart. 

The center holds until at the apex of their flight they separate. 

Two paths diverge in the sunny sky only a moment. The Swallowtails wheel back toward one another, spinning into synchrony, pursuit, and convergence.